CSSteele wrote:What in the DLC states that Omega is an old Prothean station? I guess I missed that bit.

Also, what in Cronos are the things that have been determined to be entirely questionable, aside from the weird 'bugs' where your companions stop moving and the powers will fly off into space in the hull breaches?

Retribution leaves little doubt that the Reapers are the ones who built Omega. As for Cronos, there's lots of little oddities. The most obvious of which is naturally the Proto-Reaper. Not only is it completely asinine for it to be salvaged, but you get the heart if you destroyed the base and the brain if you didn't. Which is like the most blatant allegory ever. Somebody explain to me how the heart survives a thermonuclear blast but not a radiation pulse.

Then there's many inconsistencies to be noticed if you read the novels. TIM's real station is a small, unnamed (and not just to the reader, TIM specifically decided not to give it a name) station. So small that it only has a crew of a couple dozen. A behemoth of a station with another random Greek mythology name is exactly the kind of the thing Shepard's imagination would dream up. Another thing is the Paul Grayson reference. All Shepard knows of Grayson is that Cerberus experimented on him and he was a red sand addict. The message TIM gives about him "only being loyal to his next dose of red sand" is what Shepard might think of such a person with that little knowledge. Shepard has no way of knowing that Grayson was clean for 2 years and that Cerberus had to forcibly inject him with more drugs in an effort to break his will for the Reapers. Given that context, TIM's message makes no sense.

There's a hull breach in an area with no mass effect shield keeping oxygen in, and the team doesn't wear helmets. It was pointed out prior to EC, and it remained unfixed in EC. A much less noticeable breach on Mars was fixed though.

There's several weird "hallway to nothing" areas in both Cronos and London. The kind of things that are sometimes used in virtual realities where someone can wander where they're not supposed to and get stopped before going into an unfinished area.

EDI freely admits in ME2 that she was made from parts of Sovereign's wreckage. But she never mentions she was that VI on Luna? Weird, to say the least. Meanwhile, if this whole thing was a Reaper story, it makes perfect sense. The Luna VI was a murderous computer with no sense of morality. If it can become one of Shepard's closest friends, maybe there's hope for the other murderous computers with no morality? It might give Shepard pause to consider control or synthesis.

Bolded for emphasis.

However, I disagree with a bit. I think it's quite possible that a lot of the details are Free-Shepard himself filling in blanks to help himself, just as much as Indoc-Shepard filling in blanks to corrupt himself.

IronicParticle wrote:Dreams can be identical to real life in every way.

Well, we're dealing with fiction, and sometimes they are in a particular work, and in others everything's always strange. In Mass Effect, it's established that alternate realities never look like the real world. The three dreams, Geth consensus, Leviathan's mind room, and from Harbinger's laser to the breath scene. They all share various dream-like qualities not present in other places.

IronicParticle wrote:Dreams can be identical to real life in every way.

Well, we're dealing with fiction, and sometimes they are in a particular work, and in others everything's always strange. In Mass Effect, it's established that alternate realities never look like the real world. The three dreams, Geth consensus, Leviathan's mind room, and from Harbinger's laser to the breath scene. They all share various dream-like qualities not present in other places.

But you are seeing it all wrong, what do you think the point was to the Geth consensus... to the Dreams? Leviathan's mind room? Shepard being resurrected and standing on his own grave? Being asked if he is sure that he is in reality? The reason it was so blunt before, was so people couldn't deny Shepard was in non-reality and to subtly send messages to the player. Like how even though we know it's not real now, the same may not be so later. Leviathan could've made an entire room, I'm sure. But it's goal wasn't to deceive Shepard of what was going on.

The ending is a deception, I think the whole point is that the dream started without you knowing it... and then as the dream progressed things get weirder and weirder increasing the odds you will catch on. That's kind of the point, but it makes vastly more sense the dream started with NO weirdness.

_________________Life is chaos itself. Organisms appear and evolve as a mere byproduct of thermodynamics.

Welcome to a universe made up of many universes, enter prisoner 092993 of a tiny blue dot.

I know that the novels blatantly said that Omega was a Reaper station, with the Reapers giving a blueprint-like overlay in Grayson's head, commenting on how things change but the basics of their designs are always present, something like that. I was asking what in Omega said it was Prothean.

I've heard all of those statements before, about Cronos, but hadn't seen the layout nor had I thought much about where we were headed in comparison to the shots of the station leading in. The floor-plan of the station and the areas we were able to traverse through make it seem like a smaller station, which fits with the books and how it was presented, to a point. However, we have to look at the fact that the books were written by Drew, and he left the ME team, so it's quite possible they threw out his ideas for it and went with their own. I know it's meta and doesn't fit entirely, but ... well... it's still possible.

IronicParticle wrote:Dreams can be identical to real life in every way.

Well, we're dealing with fiction, and sometimes they are in a particular work, and in others everything's always strange. In Mass Effect, it's established that alternate realities never look like the real world. The three dreams, Geth consensus, Leviathan's mind room, and from Harbinger's laser to the breath scene. They all share various dream-like qualities not present in other places.

So we know that Cronos isn't an alternate reality because all the alternate realities look clearly surreal. And we know that all the alternate realities look clearly surreal because all of the places that even might be an alternate reality are clearly surreal. Seems legit. I can't find a flaw in your awesome, volus iron man logic.

Let us also consider the fact that with the amount careful planning TIM does, it is highly unlikely that his true base of operations would be found so easily by simply placing a tracking device on his fleeing henchmen.

And as skilled and dangerous as they make Kai Leng out to be, I highly doubt he'd get as far as TIM true hiding spot without ensuring there wasn't a tracking device attached to him.

_________________PS3 ID: HJL14J ~~~~~~~The ending is simply a pop quiz to see if you, the player, payed attention to the themes and messages present within the trilogy.

Drewton wrote:I believe in IT, but I just try not to scrutinize every single thing.

If Shepard's resurrection was at the start of ME3 people would definitely be saying it was IT evidence. The Lazarus Project science was pretty bad if there was any.

It made sense to me. So long as the brain's intact, he can be brought back.

Actually, I had a pretty long argument with my mom, who's a nurse, about this. The brain constantly needs oxygen, and if it doesn't get it the cells almost immediately begin to self-destruct. It still takes a little while (about 5 minutes) for the brain to totally die, but once it gets past that the brain's dead, period, no matter how much money you push into bringing it back to life. The cells are totally destroyed. This can be put off for a while by freezing the body immediately (as in, less than a few seconds), thus causing all body processes to slow to almost nothing, but once you warm up just a little bit (say, from re-entry) the body processes speed back up again and you're again left with no oxygen, causing unrecoverable brain death.

So no, without even getting into all the problems from re-entry itself (such as the Shepard-pancake) Shepard's brain would definitely be dead within a few hours at most, and definitely by the time Liara would have come to get his body.

And hey, this isn't the only medical mistake made in ME2. For instance, Tali says that she gets sick from allergic reactions to germs, not the germs themselves, but allergic reactions are actually the result of an overactive immune system, which would mean that Quarians' immune systems would be, if anything, too strong and too watchful for foreign presences. It seems to me that the Mass Effect writing team, while very strong in the physics department, just dropped the ball with medical stuff.

Sorry, rant over.

Anyways, yes, I agree, the proto-Reaper couldn't possibly have survived that explosion, and to add to the list of things wrong with Cronos, in the long hall before the room with Kai Leng powers just go completely crazy. Whenever you shoot one off, it can head directly to the side of the hall, down to ground in front or sometimes behind you, and occasionally even back to the top of the doorway you came in. It's completely random, except for the fact that it never goes where you aim at. Your squadmates also don't go where you tell them too, or even move at all unless you're not looking at them, much like during the beam run. Lastly, to make it even weirder, the entire hallway is almost exactly like another hallway on the Citadel during ME1.

Putting all of that together, I'd have to say that this looks a lot like Shepard's really deeply hallucinating at that point and, in reality, he's just wandering around in some random room that looks nothing like a hall, which obviously screws with his perception of where everything is and where powers would go, even if aimed straight ahead.

Oh, and this may or may not be relevant, but does anybody know where exactly all of the mooks during Kai Leng's boss fight come from? It seems pretty odd for them to just fall out of the sky, and may be another impossible thing to add to the list.

To me, that's really, really picking at details though, medical stuff will always be a bit iffy in fiction, and this is sci-fi. The planet Shepard died at had a thinner atmosphere, less gravity, and was much colder than Earth, the intention obviously to be help the idea that he survives. Thinner atmosphere means less resistance and therefore heat in reentry, less gravity means less falling speed/impact force, and the cold temperature to better preserve the body. It's not perfect, but it's far more detail than most stories can claim.

The other troops come from what is likely the room above TIM's office, seems pretty normal to me.

Yeah, there really is as much plausibility to Shepard's brain surviving that long as to surviving re-entry from space into London, if not less.

The Lazarus Project may be the biggest implausibility in Mass Effect.

BleedingUranium wrote:To me, that's really, really picking at details though, medical stuff will always be a bit iffy in fiction, and this is sci-fi. The planet Shepard died at had a thinner atmosphere, less gravity, and was much colder than Earth, the intention obviously to be help the idea that he survives. Thinner atmosphere means less resistance and therefore heat in reentry, less gravity means less falling speed/impact force, and the cold temperature to better preserve the body. It's not perfect, but it's far more detail than most stories can claim.

Not even getting into the physics of reentry, which he would probably not survive, it's about his brain being dead. His location does not matter for that.

Last edited by Drewton on Sat Apr 06, 2013 6:07 am; edited 1 time in total

BleedingUranium wrote:To me, that's really, really picking at details though, medical stuff will always be a bit iffy in fiction, and this is sci-fi. The planet Shepard died at had a thinner atmosphere, less gravity, and was much colder than Earth, the intention obviously to be help the idea that he survives. Thinner atmosphere means less resistance and therefore heat in reentry, less gravity means less falling speed/impact force, and the cold temperature to better preserve the body. It's not perfect, but it's far more detail than most stories can claim.

The other troops come from what is likely the room above TIM's office, seems pretty normal to me.

Not to mention this is a video game, so will suffer from video game logic. We need Shepard as the protagonist, so no mater what happens they'l be able to be brought back to life. Think of it like Gandalf the Grey. There is no way he survived that fall, yet came back as Gandalf the White because his job wasn't over yet. Same with Shepard.

BleedingUranium wrote:To me, that's really, really picking at details though, medical stuff will always be a bit iffy in fiction, and this is sci-fi. The planet Shepard died at had a thinner atmosphere, less gravity, and was much colder than Earth, the intention obviously to be help the idea that he survives. Thinner atmosphere means less resistance and therefore heat in reentry, less gravity means less falling speed/impact force, and the cold temperature to better preserve the body. It's not perfect, but it's far more detail than most stories can claim.

The other troops come from what is likely the room above TIM's office, seems pretty normal to me.

Not to mention this is a video game, so will suffer from video game logic. We need Shepard as the protagonist, so no mater what happens they'l be able to be brought back to life. Think of it like Gandalf the Grey. There is no way he survived that fall, yet came back as Gandalf the White because his job wasn't over yet. Same with Shepard.

Isn't arguing against simplifying stuff as "video game logic" a huge part of IT reasoning?

To play devil's advocate a bit, if it's true that Shepard can survive a fall/re-entry in some way, how does the breath scene help IT?

Last edited by Drewton on Sat Apr 06, 2013 6:13 am; edited 3 times in total

Hence the cold temperature. Though I think the ME team went with the technically incorrect, but simple and believable idea that when you die, the brain just stops and remains as is. No breakdown, at least, until decomposition starts, but that takes a while.

Selim Bradley wrote:Not to mention this is a video game, so will suffer from video game logic. We need Shepard as the protagonist, so no mater what happens they'l be able to be brought back to life. Think of it like Gandalf the Grey. There is no way he survived that fall, yet came back as Gandalf the White because his job wasn't over yet. Same with Shepard.

You always use the term "video game logic", but something like "fiction logic" would be more accurate, as these things happen across all mediums.

Yeah, but this one actually has merit. They needed a way to get Shepard to not be with the Aliance, and the only way to do that was death since if Shepard was just captured the Alliance would search for them.

There are some things in the game that are just "video game logic". An example being the Reaprs ignoring the Citadel to shut down all relays. There's no logical reason for that except that it wouldn't be much of a game if they were shut down.

Last edited by Selim Bradley on Sat Apr 06, 2013 6:17 am; edited 2 times in total

Selim Bradley wrote:Not to mention this is a video game, so will suffer from video game logic. We need Shepard as the protagonist, so no mater what happens they'l be able to be brought back to life. Think of it like Gandalf the Grey. There is no way he survived that fall, yet came back as Gandalf the White because his job wasn't over yet. Same with Shepard.

You always use the term "video game logic", but something like "fiction logic" would be more accurate, as these things happen across all mediums.

True, the hero's ressurection to finish the job would be "fictional logic".